Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!bloom-beacon!SABER.COM!jimf
From: jimf@SABER.COM
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: standard pixmap format for R5
Message-ID: <9008100422.AA21029@armory>
Date: 10 Aug 90 04:22:11 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 20

|The XPM format suggested by Bull is still bulky, but reasonable for pictures
|with less than 257 colors in them, but I think it would fail after that (or
|at least I don't remember how it handled fatter pixels).

The format defined the length of the pixel in characters.  2 was the
only length supported in the sample code, but it's pretty easy to
implement longer ones.  The loader I wrote for xloadimage can support
any length.

A text format isn't bad, but it's better to define a very rigid binary
format.  Xwd isn't too bad except that the loader has to be very
complicated to handle all the possible dump formats if it wants to
support loading onto different visuals.  Something simpler -- such as
Sun rasterfile -- is a better choice.

Happy hacking,

jim frost
saber software
jimf@saber.com